Friday, September 25, 2009

BRUNSWICK MONUMENT, GENEVA

The English nobleman Charles II d’Este-Guelph, also known as Duke of Brunswick (1804-1873), was a distinguished linguist, outstanding horseman, musician and talented investor. At the same time, he was also an eccentric and paranoiac man.

He was troubled but also troubling. Paranoid, with an acute persecution complex, he reinforced his bedroom and equipped his palace in Paris with secret passageways.It seems that Brunswick once said that, «were not for his enormous wealth, he would already be in an insane asylum».Due to his escapades he was dethroned and chased from his country in 1830 and lived for a while in Paris.

Three years before his death he came to live in Geneva and stayed in one of the hotels. When he died, he gave all his money to the city of Geneva in exchange for the construction of this mausoleum, built in 1879 (on Quai du Mont-Blanc) by architect Franel on the model of one in Verona, Italy. The city used the money to build the golden gates of Parc des Bastions and the city's opera, the Grand Theatre.